


Look alive sunshine

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Titanfall (Video Games)
Genre: AD is usually Adamantine and is mine!, Canon-Typical Violence, Chrys is Cae's, F/F, Giant Robots, It's just a bunch of short snippets again some more, Mecha, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, They're usually destiny ocs but titanfall good pilot/titan good, inbetween titanfall 1 & 2 about, very pre apex legends but they'll be an au eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:35:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25167829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which there's several weapons, a lot of art supplies, some impromptu dates, a pilot, a titan and falling in love
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s), Original Female Character(s)/Original Non-Human Character(s), Pilot/Titan
Kudos: 7





	1. We want someone like you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caescollection](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caescollection/gifts).



Chrysanthemum Vale isn’t just any pilot, no sir. She’s an MCOR vet, one of the founders of the militia. Born and raised on the frontier, in the hellhole of Demeter itself. A decorated operative with her daughter following in her footsteps- albeit as a pilot of the 9th fleet instead of Titans. Chrys is a decorated officer, scrappy and stubborn, better at survival than a cockroach. Better then her last Titan, reduced to so much radioactive slag. Which is why she’s here with the new jockeys, jostling idiots waiting for their first and should they be lucky their only partner. Chrys isn’t lucky.

She doesn’t want a new Titan, her Scorch was a perfect fit, outdated Vi or no. Years of partnership don’t just vanish into shrapnel like the physical can. Vow had been her stalwart partner in matte black and scarlet pinstriping. But they’d been blown up in an IMC raid, after her long distinguished service she gets first pick of the lot. She gets to march the line of machines, judging until she is nudged towards the lavender grey Vanguard by the Armourer in charge here.

AD-3451 is an oversized final prototype with a holstered antique arc cannon and is holding a fucking sword at her side. Chrys likes her style despite herself. She knocks against her leg ringing blows with the flat of her fist.  
“Gonna make me strain my neck to talk?”

She chuffs a laugh warm and rough, Chrys likes that despite herself too. AD-3451 kneels, sword to her side like a fairytale knight. “I’m sure somehow you’d manage.”

Chrys runs through the standard questions, specs, stats and past trial runs. The make of her core, fit of her armour, the weight of her armaments. Main mechanics- if there are any she prefers, what's the manufacture date on her Ai and her current chassis, has she run real combat ever before.  
Halfway through the routine she clambers up neatly hidden handholds and knocks on her optic housing. Bright violet light flickers up, back down and she stands to go pace the same path Chrys had been twenty minutes earlier without being asked. They spend the rest of their time between questions watching pilots slowly filter off partners picked. Amicable silence fills the hanger when they’re the only set left. The Titan doesn’t shift awkwardly, too careful to jostle her but she goes through the motions and pointless sound of clearing a throat nonetheless.

“So, did you want to book the gauntlet or should I? Anything to keep in mind?”

Chrys pats her shoulder and swings off the scaffolding dropping off at her thigh to the ground. “We’ll get you a flamethrower, then tests will go perfectly.” She thinks if she had a face she’d be smiling. “And think of a name, the code is a mouthful!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes the chapter titles are all references to my chemical romance songs what about it


	2. Home is through you

Adamantine has been knocked almost wholly offline by repeated EMP blasts strong enough the taste of ozone still sticks to Chrys’ throat. Her voice grates and echos on loop, “Run, can’t move, hide and shelter, can’t move.” over and over faintly. The Ronin that set this trap is bearing down on them, sliding down the furthest most canyon wall. IMC are digging in and the Militia is quickly advancing in their direction. If Chrys made a break for it or braced for impact the odds would be in her favour. But only her favour, and well-  
“I don’t want to lose another titan.”

It’s more soft spoken then she meant. She pulls herself up to the cockpit roof for better leverage, with each breath punctuating a kick to the broken hatch. It cracks under her boots before the metal unfurls at last and Chrys swings free. The Ronin is charging, the situation desperate enough she tears a flare gun out and fires a mess shot into the sky. Brilliant smoke pools from the dropped guns’ muzzle. By the time the secondary flashbang cracks louder than the artillery Ronin has raised one of those stupidly massive sword for a killing blow right to her partners’ AI core. Adamantine’s own blade has fallen in front of her and Chrys is struck with a stubborn idea.  
“And I’m certainly not loosing you today!”

She darts forward and heaves the sword up into position just in time. She thinks this will break her the moment before impact and lets only that doubt shatter. She had no choice except to withstand.  
Every muscle fibre, synthetic exostrands in her suit and organic beneath her skin, honed by years of conflict strain under the weight. Brilliant sparks run from their grinding clash. They’re still here alive. Adamantine may be delirious behind her, a titan and pilot are in their way and Chrys only has a sword. The Ronin winds up for a strike again, she swings it to parry again. Chrys has someone who needs protection at her back, her friends now visible on the horizon, another smoke flare in the holster and a sword. She’s worked miracles with less, she’s never needed anything more. Chrys grins bloody teeth bared in a snarl, a dare to try and get through her up at the Titan, bright as biting into a firework.


	3. Kiss my battery

Chrys has climbed up to her shoulder again, stencil, rag and bottles sticking out her back pocket, jumpsuit tied around her waist. She pauses, hands loose and leg hooked tight to admire the view. Brilliant stars, blue planet and endless inky expanse beneath flow through the windows as hundreds of pilots, soldiers and workers scurry about below. It’s a peaceful bustle, but watching them clean up yesterday’s carnage is never a long diversion. Before she starts again Adamantine leans against the hanger wall stock-still.  
Their recent engagements had all gone well for the milita. They’d been deployed against a Tone-Legion duo advancing on a ground complex. Chrys had popped out one of the optics before calling her down to shred the pair. She fell like lightning, hit twice as hard. Chrys darted between piloting her and parkour easy as she breathes. They had them thoroughly outnumbered and they still didn’t stand a chance.  
Two titans downed together means two more for the tally, team efforts against equals are all they count.  
Adamantine just finishes irising open her auxiliary senses when she settles. Chrys boots knock her back when she taps along to some beat stuck in her head letting her know she’s in place.  
A bakers dozen stylized knives the size of her pilot’s pinky finger cluster just above her left acolyte armature. Scapula. Shoulder blade. She can see Chrys pick a place, flapping her hand to dry off the ethanol, slapping the tiny template down. The full range of her vision doesn’t let her see the plating itself, just Chrys pulling out the airbrush. Throwing dark hair over her shoulder, wrinkling her nose to focus. Just hears the compressor hiss, doesn’t feel it. But if she leans forward for a better view though the input to balance calibrations shift minutely, so so slightly. The feedback from that is almost like a gentle touch.

She can’t truly feel through her armour- and she is nothing if not armour, but when Chrys thinks she’s subtle and slaps a bright decal on her other shoulder she senses the metal ring sees the cheeky smile.

“Keep sticking all that art on me and they’ll ship me off to a museum. Give me a shiny plaque instead of a medal going here stands Adamantine, her pilot wanted a Monet.”

Chrys pulls another one out of her pocket. She flaps the starburst pattern in a camera, slapping it in place for emphasis. “Here stands Adamantine, prettiest Titan in the frontier.”

“You’re gonna make me blush boss.”

Chrys snorts, thumbnail tracing bubbles out from under the stickers in idle patterns. Adamantine wants to bask in the moment, to share the feeling. She sketches ideas in her mind, the handful of planets they call home rendered to dots, a cuff or vine made of circuitry. A data knife in clean lines. She’s not sure how to ask, but saves the mock-ups anyways for one rainy day after they kill something especially badass together.  
Chrys pauses her stroking and pipes up.

“Do you want to paint the sword?”


	4. See what tomorrow brings

The frontier is vast, strange, empty.  
IMC bases and outposts are hidden half as well as their own but they still must be scouted out. To survey for milita constructs takes a many part team, engineers and soldiers in a constantly moving band. To hunt for their enemy, mark them and strike down the weakest links only takes two.  
It’ll be months before they returned everything goes well. Months in the wilderness alone together.  
Sometimes Chrys pilots her, for the rush of a body that never tires. Summits mountains digging fingers into sheer rock, passes lakes by striding the bottom, reeds catching on her joints. Sometimes they walk side by side, Adamantine brushes branches away and Chrys points out details she might have missed otherwise, across the pathway, far in the distance with a sniper's eye for detail instead of a high zoom lens. Rarely she’ll be allowed to just carry Chrys, asleep in her cockpit steps measured even precise so not to rock, climbing over her for minor repairs, on her shoulder perched like a bird of prey.

This particular evening, under clear skies and hazy green twilight she’s sitting in her hands, legs crossed and typing a report one handed. Adamantine has curled one pinky finger in to rest against where her calves meet, Chrys’ other hand is wrapped firmly just past the most distal joint. The meadow is bigger than some carrier ships and near perfectly flat. Chrys reaches up to tug at a wire briefly fiddling then moving her hand back. The wind is faint, no interruption on the horizon. The stars are coming out.  
Adamantine runs a careful careful so very careful and delicate thumb down Chrys’ hair, crown of her head to the centre of her spine.

“Look up, I don’t have these constellations mapped, the stars just have numbers assigned.”

What she means is there’s something beautiful and new, I want to share but it comes out stifled. She thinks Chrys understands when tablet aside, eyes skyward leaning against her thernar plate she asks, “Do you think we get to name then?”

Adamantine settles under a copse of trees just enough to camouflage them from above, instead of carrying onward they spend the early light night suggesting increasingly silly names and shapes in what they see.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes the chapter titles are all references to my chemical romance songs what about it


End file.
